Last night felt like Christmas morning, while on the way to the latest HemisFair Park public meeting at Sunset Station. Various consultants would be there to share their framework plan for the park based on input from two previous meetings, and info-gathering sessions with smaller groups. But would the 200 or so participants at the meeting represent the gleeful kid, completely satisfied with his/her gift? Or would they be the pouty-face kid who didn’t like what Santa brought them?

The reaction of the packed house was mostly positive with one major sticking point: how the park connects with the east side. And it is a framework plan, meaning it’s the version before the first draft of the master plan. The feedback gathered from last night’s meeting will help craft the draft, the overall process of which is being lead by L.A.-based design firm Johnson Fain.

So here are the plan’s highlights:

• demolish 200,000 square feet of exhibit space (or about half) of the convention center, essentially clearing out that corner on Alamo and Market streets, and replace it with green space, a portion of which could be dedicated for parking. The Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center would then be extended east to be flush with South Bowie Street. The city had already been looking at a convention center expansion eastward, but it was unclear if it envisioned any sort of demolition, as well. Read today’s Express-News story for more.

• reinstate Goliad Street, which would be a continuation of Nueva Street (flanking La Villita), crossing Alamo, continuing into the park, essentially paralleling Durango Boulevard all the way to I-37. This would revive a portion of the original street grid, at the same time incorporating some of the historic, pre-HemisFair ’68 structures. As one would head east, the park would get denser with residential and mixed use components.

An envisioned street car running north/south on Alamo would be able to turn on Goliad and send passengers through the park and on to the east side, connecting with the Robert Thompson Transit Center next to the Alamodome.

• build a marketplace — not necessarily a grocery store — but something outdoors, is what I gathered, on the corner of Alamo and Durango, in close proximity to the Southtown neighborhoods. The marketplace would also contain retail with an emphasis on locally-owned shops.

• turn Alamo and Durango into pedestrian-friendly streets by widening and landscaping the sidewalks, and getting rid of medians. This would essentially connect the Lavaca neighborhood with the park, and, to a degree, La Villita.

• demolish the Institute of Texan Cultures’ existing building, and reincorporate the museum into the park (which was kind of skimmed over during the presentation). Which gets us to the somewhat touchy area of the plan. It seems to me the demolition of some of the large existing structures is a forgone conclusion. For example, the federal courthouse and training center would be examples of this thinking, which is why I didn’t hear any of the attendees say, “Hey, what about those buildings?” But the ITC? That was a bit of a shocker.

• execute sustainability efforts with solar panels on the convention center roof, retention basins and green building practices throughout the park.

• build three parks, beginning with the largest one at Alamo and Market streets, which would decrease in size as you walked southeast, and that would be connected by smaller, linear parks, like the way Millennium Park connects with Grant Park in Chicago. (And there’s an amphitheater in there somewhere.) So the largest green space on Alamo and Market, or the park’s northwest corner, would serve as the park’s entrance or face from the north, and the smallest park around the housing on the southeast side, would be more intimate, with accents like chess sets, which I’m all for. The river, which currently dead ends as a grotto between the original convention center and the 2001 expansion, would some how extend into the park.

Those are the highlights. In broader terms, the consultants envision a kind of cultural corridor along Alamo Street, and a neighborhood corridor along Goliad and Durango. Right now, Durango is very much a defined border between downtown and the Southtown neighborhoods. This plan would basically dissolve that border. Instead of park-starts-here, Lavaca-starts-here, the plan would blend park with neighborhood.

The biggest critique was proposed parking inside the park and just west of I-37. As one woman put it: “We think it’s a very good idea to connect the park to Lavaca, but please do not make the east side of the park as a dumping ground for parking space.” This drew applause. And the same observation came from several groups.

On the other hand, the second largest criticism was the need for more parking. In the framework map, significant parking would be placed on the east side of the park, as well as next to the marketplace (accessible through Goliad) and potentially in the green space at Market and Alamo adding up to “several thousand spaces,” according to David Alpaugh of Johnson Fain.

At the very top, you’ll find the framework plan in its most skeletal form. There were more detailed images, but I couldn’t get my hands on them. At least the drawing above gives you the gist. The public could see the master plan as soon as a month.